


Skullbot

by Feelysonheelys, timdadanon



Series: Silver Skull [2]
Category: The Aquabats! Super Show!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Face-Heel Makeover, Fan theory, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Robot Dismemberment, Robot Reprogramming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-04 01:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17294966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feelysonheelys/pseuds/Feelysonheelys, https://archiveofourown.org/users/timdadanon/pseuds/timdadanon
Summary: Jimmy is abducted after an encounter with the Antibats, but he may not be the only one the Aquabats need to save.[Written by timdadanon, revised by Feelysonheelys]





	1. Captured

Jimmy found himself powered back on somewhere he couldn’t recognize, restrained and mostly disassembled, with his limbs and head removed. The last image in his memory was fighting Silver Skull, and that the Antibats- Oh, the Antibats were more than just a little angry that their own technical expert, Skillsawz, fled the group after a look into his family tree revealed Aquabanian ancestry. The ex-Antibat had tracked down the Battletram, asking for protection in the event of teammates discovering his heritage and selling him out their boss, and eventually to Space Monster M. The remaining Antibats hadn’t reacted well to their turncoat team mate. Jimmy must have been disabled in the fight and taken to some sort of base, perhaps...

From what he could gather from his limited view he appeared to be some sort of lab, lit up in red like a darkroom. The lab was very sparse, aside from his limbs, a few tables, and a couple overturned chairs, he could make out two old computer monitors and a bottle of vinegar. The rest of the room was empty. Before he could attempt any further analysis, his thoughts were interrupted by the wooshing of a door.

“Ah, good morning, Robot.”

Despite the figure being out of his line of sight, he recognized the the cold, metallic voice to be that of Silver Skull. His captor approached him and then turned his detached head to face him.

“What is it this time?” Jimmy glared up into the villain’s mask. “Did you think you’d try finding a new buyer?”

“Do not worry, Jimmy the Robot,” Silver Skull responded, “Your parts will not be sold off this time-”

“—Yes, because that worked so well for you the first time it happened, didn’t it?”

“Oh, I have much better plans this time.”  
The villain before him reached for his mask, detaching the visor that hid his identity. The face underneath was just familiar enough to seem foreign and alien to Jimmy. He had seen Silver Skull without his mask before, in a tense moment in the heat of battle, but it was in a rush and from a distance. He’d replayed the memory countless times, illogically hoping what he’s seen was wrong, but here he was, in the flesh.

The man somehow managed to look more skeletal without his mask, with dark, tired, sunken eyes that surrounded lifeless red irises. Thin yet deep scars framed his gaunt features. Years of pressing a metal mask against skin left dark, bruise-like impressions, made only more evident against the white pallor of a face that hadn’t known sunshine in years. The most unignorable point of the face was a scarlet device in the shape of the letter M from which wires extruded and burrowed into his skin, with similar wiring emerging from the sides of the mask.

Jimmy could only let out a whimper. “Oh, Adam…”

“It is admirable work, is it not?” Without the mask, his voice was considerably less distorted, sounding almost like a parody to Jimmy; though he was unsure whether it was a parody of the prince he had known or the fiend who had him kidnapped. “This is what M has given me.”

“M? Space Monster—”

“Quiet!”

Silver Skull seized the bodiless robot by the neck, activating a mute switch at the base of his head. He glared into his eyes.  
“You will not interrupt me, understood?”

Jimmy nodded silently.

Silver Skull shifted from rage back to calm and almost happy at an alarming rate.

“Now, as I was saying, instead of ending my pitiful rebel existence, my master had mercy on me and allowed me to be, shall we say, ‘reprogrammed’ into a loyal member of his army. It took a great deal of adjustment, but I’m now gleeful to serve him. You can feel this way too. I have decided that you should be worthy of this mercy. You are to be reprogrammed into a servant of M, just like me. Isn’t that exciting?”

Silver Skull took a sadistic pleasure in seeing his prisoner fail to conceal the fear and disbelief in his face. He looked about ready to cry at the news of his fate, and in his current state, shaking his head just made him appear to be quaking with terror.

“Don’t be so worried, old pal,” Silver Skull gave the robot’s head a condescending tap on the nose. “You’ll be happier this way.”

The face that once belonged to Prince Adam gave his friend a big smile as he snapped the permanently grimacing metal face into place. “You’ll be happy. Just like me.


	2. Betrayal

 

“Okay, and if you take a left, you’ll see a shady looking daycare. That’s the place.”

The Aquabats parked the tram in front of the questionable business in the local suburban area, as their foe-turned-friend and ex-Antibat, Skillsawz led them to the lair of Silver Skull and the remaining Antibats after the abduction of the Aquabats’ trusty robot/guy who keeps getting kidnapped, Jimmy. Naturally, they were there to get him back and set things straight.

Bones sat up in his seat and began to squint out the window.

“Skillsawz, can I ask _why_ his lair is a crappy kids daycare?” 

“The place is just a front, really. He needed somewhere inconspicuous with a deep catacomb to set up shop in.”

Bones shifted his glare to the dubstep dork. 

“A deep catacomb. At a daycare facility.”

“Alright you two,” the Bat Commander quickly interrupted, “We don’t need to waste any more time. The last time Silver Skull had his hands on Jimmy he sold him off to those scrappers. Who knows what his plan is this time?!”

“I have a question.”

The Bat Commander stopped and looked back.

“Yes, Crash?” 

Crash bit his lip. “Are we going for just Jimmy, or...?”

An uneasy frown crossed the bat commander’s face. There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

“Crash,” The Commander put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, “If we can find a way to bring everyone home, we will. I just don’t know if it’s possible.”

“Uh,” Skillsawz interrupted, “I might have a idea of how you could try to get the boss back to the way he used to be, but no promises.”

The Commander snapped back up from his funk.  
“What? really?”

“Of you find yourself in a room with a weird glowing orb in the middle of the base, tell me. Silver Skull told us it was ‘what made him Silver Skull’,” Skillsawz exposited. “We always assumed it was, like, the source of all his weird powers, but it sounds like it’s got more to do with his whole mind control deal. If you want to take him down and set him free, you’re gonna want to destroy that thing.”

 

—–

“...and that’s why we’ve got to destroy that thing!” 

The four remaining Antibats were huddled in the base’s lounge, were the Antibat Leader was laying out his mutiny plans.

“You really think destroying Silver Skull’s weird orb will let you harvest his power?” the bassist of the group gave a doubtful eye to her band’s singer.

“Yes! I mean, he’s clearly some sort of a wizard, with all the teleporting and weird powers he’s got. And if I know one thing about wizards—“

“Mmmnnmn.”

“—And I do _so_ know one thing about wizards, Zipper-face, it’s that if you destroy a wizard’s power battery you get their magic.”

“Mnmnnnmnn,” Zipper-face crossed his arms.

“I’m with masky,” Beard Bat nodded. “If he finds us out, we’re dead.”

“But it is four against one!” The Leader pointed out. “We have numbers on our side.”

“What about that dumb robot he’s reprogramming?”

“Four to two!″ 

“Two to one if you reduce the fractions,” Bass Girl added.

“Mnmnnnnmnnnm?” 

“Do you think I care about math? If I wanted to do math, I’d go back to community college like my mom wanted. I made my choice, and it’s all led up to destroying this wizard orb.”

Beard Bat shrugged. “I mean, technically you made your choice to play in a metal band. The super villain thing was an afterthought.”

“Nnmnnnnmmmnm,” Zipper-face countered. The rest of the band nodded in agreement.

“Now you’ve got the idea. Now, _let’s go destroy that wizard orb!”_

“We still need to help the boss with the robot. He’ll get suspicious if we don’t.”

_“Let’s go destroy that wizard orb after we help with the robot!”_

  
—-

  
The Bat Commander examined his surroundings, careful to keep his movements stealthy and cool-looking. He was in a cold, sterile hallway with at least a dozen doors on each side, not to mention a number of additional connected hallways.

“Ya know Skillzy, when you said it was a catacomb under a shady daycare, I did not expect it to look so nice-ish in here” 

Skillsawz rolled his eyes at the nickname, but let it slide. “Yeah, I can see how it’d be surprising, with how clean it is and all that.”

The bats began their trek down the hallway, deeper into the labyrinth that was silver skulls base. Despite his stylized “ninja walking,” The Commander was buzzing with questions  
that he did not hesitate to share. Loudly.

“So, where do you think they could be hiding Jimmy, huh? Got any secret labs?”

“Ugh, keep your voice down,” the DJ flipped some hair out of his face. “Yeah, he’s probably at one of the labs? we have four but none of them get much use. They’re more of an evil lair formality.”

Ricky interrupted with an old classic. “Should we split up?”

“Ricky, only one of us knows his way around this place,” Eaglebones pointed out.

“-and even then, it's only barely,” Skillsawz admitted.

“So yeah!” The Commander declared. “Let’s split up, gang!”

—

In a lab deep in Silver Skull’s lair, the villain watched like a vulture as his minions picked over the inactive robot, giving the finishing touches to their old enemy’s new look. 

“Did you make sure to change all the blue lights to red?” Silver Skull asked, looking over the robot’s nearly complete form. “If even one of them is off, it's just going to look embarrassing.” 

“Yes, my dark lord,” the head Antibat looked his boss in the eye holes. “I even double checked.”

“I made sure his limbs are locked in,” Beard Bat chimed in.

Silver Skull tilted his head downward in a way that his minions assumed indicated he was supposed to be smiling under his mask, but they weren’t quite sure and weren’t too keen on asking.

“Good, we don’t need them flying off. Now, it’s time for our new friend to say hello, don’t you think?”

With the flip of a gaudy theatrical switch, Silver Skull’s robot surged with life, eyes snapping wide open. He bore a metal face to match his master’s helmet, set apart by glowing red eyes and the Antibats’ traditional pointed domino mask. He bore an Antibats uniform complete with a metallic cowl, with fashionable 4-inch platform boots to make the already pretty dang tall android tower over his new teammates.

In a nutshell, Skullbot looked almost comically edgy, suited just as well for a Halloween party at a goth rave as for snapping the bones of his enemies. It was a bizarre combination to describe, but he made it work to an intimidating degree.

“My creation,” Silver Skull steepled his fingers, staring up with glee at the robot. “Identify yourself.”

The imposing android looked blankly down at the masked villain, pausing before speaking in a familiar voice with an extra synthesized twist.

“I am Skullbot.” 

“And I am?”

“You are Silver Skull.”

Silver Skull clasped his hands together. “And what is your purpose, my mechanized minion?”

The android blinked, his empty expression unchanging. “I exist to destroy my enemy. I am here to destroy The Aquabats.”

Silver Skull let out a quiet, dark chuckle, in tried and true trite villain fashion.

“Good. Very good, indeed.”


	3. Looking

The Aquabats began their investigation of Silver Skull’s evil lair, with the Commander, Ricky, and Crash each going alone while Eaglebones teamed up with Skillsawz in order to gain a more thorough search and understandably keep an eagle-eye on the ex-villain. The Aquabats ducked down every offshoot hallway to search for any sign of their robot buddy, checking in with each other periodically over video wristwatch communicators. About a half an hour into the search the Bat Commander was feeling particularly antsy at their collective lack of success, and began to do check-ins.    
  
“Well, I found this lab,” Ricky reported, “But it doesn’t look like there’s been anything going on in here for a long time. It’s not even like ‘science classroom during summer break’ empty, it’s  _ empty _ empty.”

The Bat Commander nodded, giving Ricky a worried, nervous grin.   


“Okay, good talk. I’m gonna call Crash next, keep it up.”   
  
The Commander let out his nerves with a deep breath and recomposed himself.   
  
“Crash, find anything?”   
  
“I found a pretty cool lamp!”   
  
“Focus, buddy.”   
  
“Yeah, okay. No sign of Jimmy.”   
  
The Commander sighed. “Well, I’ve got one last call to make. Keep me posted.”   
  
There was some knot in the Commander’s gut, and not in any of the fun, food-related ways. He could feel the anxiety getting to him. Something was up. 

Skillsawz answered his communicator the moment he felt it buzzing. 

“How’s it hanging, Team Beatbox Birds?”   
  
“Don’t call us that. I don’t even beatbox.” The DJ rolled his eyes. 

“Found anything?”

“Ugh, nothing so-”   
  
There was a moment of radio silence over the communication as Eaglebones motioned for Skillsawz to follow him into the adjacent room. 

“I think Bones found something. I’m pretty sure all these labs are built to look the same, you know, to confuse intruders and junk, but—”

The former Antibat shut his mouth once he flicked on the lights. 

“Is he in there?” The voice came over the communicator. 

Skillsawz hadn’t been too personally acquainted with the robot they were looking for-- heck, he barely knew the names of the other team members, save for Ricky ‘I rigged a music competition for a chance to smooch a pretty girl’ Fitness-- but he seemed like enough of a normal guy for the view of the room to be gruesome.   
  
“Um… not all of him.”

Humanoid parts littered the room surrounding a large work table. A stray foot, articles of clothing, a pair of eyes, and most disturbingly, the flayed artificial skin of a human face lay on the tabletop.   
  
“What do you mean,  _ not all of him?!” _ the Commander’s voice yelped over the small speaker. “Is he okay? What’s going on?”   
  
“He’s not here, Commander!” Bones pulled Skillsawz’s wrist to talk to his leader. “We just found parts of him. We’ll take a closer look and call you back!”   
  
Skillsawz switched off the communicator. Okay, so maybe they would be bringing the robot home in a few boxes. No big deal. He’d help with the heavy lifting, get the parts back to their Professor friend, and take off to figure out the rest of his career. He stepped over a lost shoe, pushing it toward the table with his foot as he looked over at his Aquabat companion. Bones’ eyes flashed gold, and he moved to pick up an inconspicuous sheet of paper. 

“It’s a checklist,” he explained. “It’s labeled… really, he heads his lists with ‘Super Evil Plan’? What a dork.”

“He won’t do something unless he’s convinced it’s the evil thing to do,” Skillsawz shrugged. “Honestly, sometimes it was like working for a villain in a really dumb kids’ show.”

Eaglebones scanned the list. “Step one, capture stupid goody-good robot. Step two, use superior knowledge to repr…”

The guitarist trailed off, eyes widening as he read further. He folded the paper in half, stuffing it in his pocket.

“We need to call the Commander.”

“Uh, I assume you’re going to fill me in,” Skillsawz said as he pressed the call button.

“Did you find him?!” the Bat Commander asked, sounding panicked.

“We found Silver Skull’s plans,” Bones explained, his tone heavy. “He wants to reprogram Jimmy into what he’s calling a Skullbot before using him to destroy us in order to please Space Monster M.”

The line went dead. 

“...Are you okay, Commander?”

“We’re going to find him. We’re not letting this happen again, you hear me?” his voice was shaking. “I’m fine. I’m going to be fine. I’m just going to turn off the communicator for a second. You update the others. I will catch up with you.”   
  
The MC Bat Commander could be heard taking a deep, shaky breath before hanging up.


	4. Found

The Antibats gathered in one of the lair’s dozens of empty rooms and sat down together, with Leader Bat heading the decision.

“It’s simple,” he proclaimed. “We just need to smash the orb, then our warlock boss will be nothing, and his abilities will be ours. It should be a one-step plan. Now, how should we start?”

His teammates all went blank.

“Um...”

“Mnmn.”

“Okay, I have something. But it’s the bare minimum.”

“What is it, Bass Girl?”

“We need a distraction. As long as we’re sure our dark lord is busy, it should be a snap.”

The door quietly wooshed open, and the Antibats met eyes with a large, bearded Aquabat carrying the fancy lamp from the break room. Just as quick as the Antibats could notice him, he pressed the button to close the door and could be heard making a hasty retreat. 

“That ought to do.”

“Mnnmnnnm.”

“Alright, let’s call the boss.”

\------

Crash began dashing down the hall, clutching tight to his new lamp. As soon as he turned a corner and that he wasn’t being immediately pursued, he called up the Bat Commander.

“Commander, they saw me!”

“Jimmy?”

“The Antibats! I opened the door and the room wasn’t empty.”

The Bat Commander let out an annoyed sigh.

“Sorry.”

“It’s… we can work with this, Crash. We just might be seeing Jimmy sooner than later now.”

\-----

Skillsawz and Bones had been gathering Jimmy’s spare parts and collecting them on the work table when the communicator buzzed. 

“Any news, Command--” 

“They know we’re here.”

“The Antibats?”

“Uh,  _ yeah, _ duh.”

Both were taken slightly aback by the Commander's tone.

“Okay. What do we need to-”

A laser beam then skimmed past Eaglebones’ head, creating a loud sound as the missed blast left a small crater in the wall. Eaglebones and Skillsawz jolted upright, gazing into the bright-red eyes of their attacker.

“Geez! What’s going on over there? Are you two okay?!“

The two shared a fearful glance, trying not to make any sudden movements as Skillsawz slowly raised the communicator.

“We found the robot,” he whispered before cutting the call short.

\-----

“The room with the orb is just a few doors away,” the Leader Bat hissed. “Soon, unlimited dark powers will be ours! Our band will have no need to work under this loser. What’s more metal than skeleton-themed black magic?”

“You’re making an awful lot of assumptions on how his powers work,” Beard Bat pointed out. “Are we all going to get his powers by smashing this thing?

The lead Antibat paused for a moment. “Well, hopefully, but I’ll take them if we don’t have a choice.”

“ _ What? _ ” Bass Girl crossed her arms. “What makes you so special?”

Zipper-face beat his drumsticks against his mask. “Mm, mnnnnmmnn.”

“Hey, you said it yourself, I’m in charge,” Leader Bat cracked his knuckles. “And if you keep making a big deal about it, I’ll remind you why. Capiche?”

“Okay, okay!” Bass Girl put her hands in the air.  “Geez, let's just get this done before Silver Skull wises up.”

\------

Silver Skull did not have his own room in his base, so to speak. All of the rooms were his. He had a place where he slept, a place to store his Mental Frequency Regulator; he didn’t need to keep everything in just one place. 

The villain was… well, perhaps  _ happiest _ wasn’t the right phrase, but he was at his best when he was occupied with a task, particularly if that task was devious in nature. It was just the way he worked: when not under director orders from his superior, he was rewarded for actions that were considered evil. To be bad was good, and he relished in it, perfecting his showmanship.

Because of these factors, Silver Skull was currently in perhaps his favorite room, the posing room. When there was nothing else to do, Silver Skull would sit in a large, fancy office chair, practicing evil poses for every occasion: gloating, scheming, glaring, the works. His beloved mask, a treasure though it was, was not the most expressive, and so extra dramatic flair was needed in order to be a most effective Silver Skull.

Perhaps it would not have been a bad idea for Silver Skull to gain a more formal education in dramatic arts. Distantly, he could recall reading at one point about techniques used by different cultures that used masks in traditional theater. To know how to tilt one’s head so that the relatively blank face could almost appear to emote under a source of light--

And then he was yanked away from that train of thought, as he realized that the memory of those readings were from the Time That Did Not Happen. Silver Skull did not pursue the fine arts, he decided. They were dirty, and far beneath him. He did not need to be bothered with such things as acting, or traditional mask theater, or… poetry…

Silver Skull went back to sitting alone in the dark room, flourishing and posing until he received a message from Skullbot.

“My lord. I have captured two of the intruders.”

Silver Skull grinned under his mask, tilting his head forward.

“Good, good. Bring them to me, my minion. I am in my… study. The dark room.”

The robot agreed, and Silver Skull was alone in silence again.


	5. Climax

Silver Skull poised himself carefully when he heard Skullbot’s footsteps. There were few things more demoralizing than having a villainous reveal moment all planned out but having the whole thing go belly-up due to lack of preparation. He settled on a classic: fingers steepled, facing away from the door in a big swivel chair. 

He waited exactly four and a half seconds before turning around, careful not to overshoot his mark and end up spinning in a circle. He stopped at the precise angle to cause the greatest dramatic effect.

Silhouetted against the doorway was the towering robot dragging each of his prisoners one-handed, each one wincing as their wrists were clenched tightly in Skullbot’s hands. The traitor who had called himself Skillsawz struggled and hit the room’s light switch with his shoulder, exposing Silver Skull’s brooding room as nothing more sophisticated than a very simple, empty space only containing his fancy black and silver chair and a single desk housing an intercom device and a glass of water. 

Well, at least he had a good opener.

“The prisoners resisted capture, but were easily overpowered,” Skullbot droned, casting a glare to the traitor as he tightened his grip.

“Excellent work, Skullbot,” Silver Skull nodded. “You have shown great promise on your first task under my command. You make for a wonderful minion. Thank you for serving me well,”

“Of course,” Skullbot responded, the monotone of his voice breaking as his bare steel face cracked a smile. “No prob, clownbag.”

Silver Skull’s train of thought screeched to a halt.

“What.”

As he attempted to process why his evil and loyal robot would call him that, Skullbot released his grip on the prisoners, and it dawned on Silver Skull that his flawless attempt to reprogram the robot might have required a little more programing knowledge than what he’d expected. As if this scenario was not opposed to his favor enough, the door then opened again to let in the other three Aquabats, the biggest one of which had his favorite lamp in his clutches. The nerve!

“Jimmy!” the lamp thief smiled. “You’re really feeling okay? Like you said over the communicator?”

“Silver Skull thought going into my files and changing the word “good” to “evil” about a dozen times would honestly change my moral compass.”

“Don’t you have like, libraries worth of programming in you?”

“5 petabytes,” the robot spoke with a bit of personal pride, “With another 2 petabytes free.“

“Is that... good?” the long-haired one asked, still rubbing one of his wrists.

“A single petabyte is a million gigabytes, Bones,” Skillsawz rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Ah. Well, that’s a lot of data to go through.”

A soft melody played through the air with no particular source.  _ Learning and Growing! _

The leader of the Aquabanian rebel squadron flourished and pointed at him.

“We have you now, Silver Skull! We’ve got our robot friend back, and there’s no stopping us now!”

“On the contrary Bat Commander,” Silver Skull retorted, determined not to appear defeated. “I still have my Antibats.”

Silver Skull the tapped his intercom microphone, grinning inwardly at how the Aquabats flinched at the audio feedback.

“Oh Antibats, report to my dark brooding room immediately.”

The response came through the communication channel unexpectedly quickly, and notably unprofessional.

“Not anymore Silver  _ Lame _ !” the Leader Bat’s gravelly voice laughed over the communication channel. “Say goodbye to your powers, Loser… Skull!”

The Bat Commander pulled a face and leaned over toward the ex-Antibat. “Did they always talk so… Sandflea-ish?”

“So what now?”

“What on earth are you talking about?!” Silver Skull yelled back what was  _ supposed _ to be his head minion.

“We’re taking control now!” Leader Bat shouted back. The noise of a grunt could be heard, followed directly by a loud, heavy crash. “Say goodbye to your magic wizard orb!” 

Silver Skull let out a series of exasperated noises, grasping at the air.

“You… you  _ morons!”  _ Silver Skull screamed. “A  _ Wizard Orb?!  _ That thing had nothing to do with my powers, you fool! It was for my skull-mask! It was an irreplaceable piece of alien technology, a gift from my benefactor! I need that darned thing to stay  _ stable, _ to stay  _ myself! _ Is it really too much for me to want to be able to take off my own mask in the comfort of my own diabolical lair?  _ Is--” _

Silver Skull froze, having realized that perhaps revealing a major point of weakness in front of individuals who had a very strong motivation to end his reign as a super villain was not his brightest of ideas, and having recognized that he was not the only one to realize this.

“Aquabats!” The Commander ordered, a grin forming on his face. “Get that helmet off of him!”

——-

The Antibats stood around in the orb containment room, listening to the chaos over the intercom, and staring down at the shattered pieces of a decidedly non-magical piece of broken technology.

“Well, there goes the most stable job I’ve ever had,” Bass Girl threw her arms in the air. “Wizard Orb, really?!”

“Maybe I should have listened to my mom and stayed in community college.”

“I should have gone through with my study abroad plans in Scandinavia.”

“Mmnmnnmnnm, mnmnn.”

The bassist stood up, tossing aside her cowl and mask. “Come on. Let’s bounce before we have to face consequences.”

“Agreed.”

——–

Silver Skull did not have very much on his side at the moment. The odds were against him, with five Aquabats and one of his own ex-minions versus a single Silver Skull. There were only two advantages he possessed: a deep understanding of his location, and the ability to chicken out and teleport away if things got further out of hand. 

It was the easiest option, really. Just go up in a puff of smoke, wait for the Aquabats to clear out, return and either fortify his base’s defenses or take what he could and start over somewhere new. Perhaps find another loyal servant of M and leech off their resources for a little while as he figured out how to repair or replace the mask stabilizer. Just a quick shake of the fist, and a “You haven’t seen the last of me, The Aquabats!” and he’d be off.

Then  _ why, _ he struggled to understand as he elbowed the Bat Commander to shake him off his person, wasn’t he doing it?

Teleporting wasn’t the problem, he reasoned as he vanished in time to dodge a grab from the robot. He appeared behind the long-haired one, pushing him forward to tumble into the short one. Physically, he could. That wasn’t the issue. 

Was he trying to stop the Aquabats from doing something? There was nothing in the base they could take from him-- nothing  _ else,  _ anyway. His scouting bird-bot was elsewhere, doing its job. The big one had already taken his lamp, which he was now holding out and away as he tried and failed to charge at his foe. He had left his cane in the robotics lab, and while it wouldn’t have been much use to the Aquabats, it was indubitably cool looking, though it didn’t fit their style. 

What was it that was driving him to stay and fight? He struggled against a tag-team of the robot and the Commander as he questioned his instincts. Perhaps his rage at the day’s failures? Persistence of will? Anger, fear, hatred, honor?

And then there was a thought that crossed his mind so briefly that he had no time to process it before his higher controls shut it down with a roar of aggression so loud that it made his head hurt. He attempted to recall it, only for his helmet to feel as though it was searing his brain for even trying to think such a thought.

His focus on the present was waning. Despite the struggle, and against the psychological pain that came with it, Silver Skull tried to replay his idea one more time.

_ I want to let The Aquabats win. _

Prince Adam went completely slack, overtaken by numbness before the MC Bat Commander wrenched his helmet off.

“I got it, I got it, I- oh, I actually did!”

As soon as the helmet was removed, the red of its bearer’s eyes melted away into blue as they rolled upward, fluttering shut as the man slumped to the floor like a limp ragdoll. The focus of the room fell to the ground with the body. 

Ricky was the first to open his mouth. “Is he…”

The robot scanned the prone figure, noticing the slight rising and falling of his chest. “He’s alive. He’s in rough shape, but he’s alive.”

They looked down with pity at the skeletal figure that had haunted them for years, both as Silver Skull, and their lost member and friend. As the weight of the situation finally hit them was a good period of silence that was broken by the inquisitive Eaglebones.

“So, uh, he used to be an Aquabat?”

“Yeah,” the Commander replied in a hushed voice as he carefully sat down cross-legged by the fallen figure’s head. “He’s an Aquabat. He’s the crown prince of Aquabania.”

“Oh.” There was really not much else that Bones could say.

The MC Bat Commander brushed the prince’s patchy hair out of his face, wincing at the agitated red M on his forehead. “He’s Prince Adam,” he choked. “Oh man, buddy…”

The room was cold and silent again until Jimmy stepped forward. He put a hand on the Commander’s shoulder, meeting eyes with him before crouching down to pick up his old friend, holding him in a bridal carry.  Crash was the next to pipe up.

“So what now?”

The Commander steadied himself as he rose to his feet. 

“We’ll… we’ll need to take him to the Professor, but aside from that we’ll have to play it by ear.” He looked up at his robot friend. “We’ll probably need to let him take a look at you too, huh?”

“The Skullbot alterations are almost entirely cosmetic,” Jimmy said. His bare steel face wasn’t quite as emotive without his skin, but his grimace was still visible. “I would really like my old look back, but we need to prioritize Adam.”

“Skillsawz and I rounded up your parts!” Eaglebones blurted, the tension of the situation wearing on him. “We can bring them to the Battletram and meet your there. I… I mean, I feel like we’re kind of intruding on a big moment for you guys anyway…”

Jimmy smiled softly. “Thank you, Bones. I don’t want to make you feel excluded, but I appreciate it.” 

Bones and the recent recruit quietly ushered themselves out of the room, leaving the veteran Aquabats with the unconscious body. Ricky and Crash stepped closer, carefully eyeing the figure who had antagonized them and the friend they hadn’t seen in ages. 

“I still can’t believe it’s him,” Crash whimpered, clutching the lamp in a hug. “You really think he’s gonna be okay?”

“We’ll make sure of it,” Ricky gave Adam a light, gentle pat on the shoulder; firm enough to hopefully be comforting, but given the prince’s condition and multiple layers of clothing, it may not have even registered.

“Come on, old buddy,” Jimmy cradled the exhausted Aquabat close. “Let’s get you home.” 


End file.
